Kona Start List Announced

Anne Haug, Lucy Charles-Barclay and Laura Philipp make up the IRONMAN World Championship podium in 2023. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

After the incredibly exciting day of racing we all enjoyed in Nice, triathlon fans can now start gearing up for what promises to be an equally exciting IRONMAN World Championship in Kona on Oct. 11. The last women’s-only racing on the Big Island will bring on a pro field of just under 60 (we’re still waiting on the age-group number for Kona) that includes three former IRONMAN and 70.3 world champions, along with nine of the top-10 finishers from last year’s worlds in Nice.

Slowtwitch will be in Kona in force, providing lots of coverage during both the lead up and on race day. We kick off our Kona 2025 coverage with today’s release of the start list.

Another Philipp/ Matthews Duel?

Wearing number one will be defending world champion, Germany’s Laura Philipp, who hasn’t raced much this year, but when she has, she’s proven to be unbeatable. She started her season off with a win at 70.3 Kraichgau, followed that up with the fastest time ever at an IRONMAN event – 8:03:13 – at IRONMAN Hamburg, then bounced back a few weeks later to take the win at Challenge Roth in 8:18:18.

That Hamburg race saw Philipp in a close duel with the woman wearing #2 in Kona, Great Britain’s Kat Matthews. She’s also enjoyed an impressive season that includes wins at IRONMAN Texas (in a scorching 8:10:34), that runner-up finish in Hamburg (8:05:13) and 70.3 wins in Swansea and Zell am See. In addition to having dialled in a near-perfect race schedule to defend her IRONMAN Pro Series title, Matthews arrives in Kona as a more than viable pre-race favorite, with the clear motivation to add a world championship title to an already impressive resume.

Last year’s race in Nice featured an exciting race between Philipp and Matthews, with the two running together for the first part of the marathon before the German pulled clear thanks to a 2:44:59 marathon to earn her first world title (after finishing third in 2023 and fourth in 2022 and 2019). While it’s easy to expect that we could see a repeat of those race-day dynamics in Kona this year, there are a number of women in the field who are likely to be part of the equation, which is why so many triathlon fans are so looking forward to this year’s women’s world championship.

Charles-Barclay Returns

Lucy Charles-Barclay on the run at T100 London. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

The last woman to win the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, Great Britain’s Lucy Charles-Barclay, missed the race in Nice due to injury, but thanks to some impressive wins this season, will arrive in Kona as one of the race favourites. She’ll be racking her bike in position #5, but make no mistake, the expectation will be that she’ll look to lead the way out of the water and look to ride away from the field as she did two years ago to add the IRONMAN world title to the 70.3 one she took in 2021.

Charles-Barclay kicked off the season with a third-place finish at T100 Singapore, won IRONMAN Lanzarote and IRONMAN 70.3 Eagleman, took fourth at T100 Vancouver, then began an impressive Kona build with wins at T100 London and Spain. The Spain win was especially impressive because she was coming off a big pre-Kona training block (in Lanzarote, no less), but additionally the wins in London and Spain saw Charles-Barclay put up the fastest and second-fastest run splits, which isn’t great news for her competition heading into the race in Kona.

The Other Returning Champ

In 2022 Chelsea Sodaro took the world title in Kona, putting an American on the top of the podium for the first time since 1996. (In case any of you want to look to correct me and say that should have been 1995 when Karen Smyers won, Paula Newby-Fraser had become an American citizen and no longer represented Zimbabwe when she took her last of eight world titles in 1996.) After winning that year, Sodaro finished sixth on the Big Island in 2023, then took third in Nice last year. She hasn’t exactly lit things up in terms of results this year – second at 70.3 Eagleman and Pennsylvania, along with a third at IRONMAN Sweden to validate her Kona spot – so the question will be whether or not Sodaro was able to remain healthy during her build up and arrives in Kona in top form.

Can Taylor Knibb Take the Full-Distance World Title

Taylor Knibb wins her third consecutive IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Two years ago many of us triathlon geeks were a bit surprised to see Taylor Knibb on the start line in Kona. Fresh off her second 70.3 world title and gearing up for the Olympics in Paris the following year, a full-distance debut didn’t seem in the cards. Knibb pointed out, though, that experience in Kona is key when it comes to winning the race, so she wanted to get that experience under her belt with the vision of taking the win two years later.

Well, we’re at that “two years later” point. Knibb has another full-distance race under her belt – she took second behind Matthews at IRONMAN Texas in April – but her 3:04:43 marathon split there leaves a question mark on whether or not the Olympic relay-medalist is ready to take the win. After years of dominating any T100 or 70.3 race she entered, Knibb has just one T100 win to her name in 2025 (Vancouver) to go along with a second in San Francisco and a third in London.

Anyone who has witnessed Knibb dominate the 70.3 worlds or T100 races (previous to this year) won’t be ready to declare the American as anything but a pre-race favorite, though. She’s not quite as fast as Charles-Barclay in the water, but is a faster cyclist and, over anything but a marathon, typically one of the stronger runners in any field.

More Kona Rookies to Watch For

That experience that Knibb referred to used to be the gold standard when it came to predicting Kona success, but that’s changed a bit over the last few years. (Both Sodaro and Gustav Iden won on debut in 2022, and that year fellow rookies Sam Laidlow and Kristian Blummenfelt rounded out the men’s podium. This year another world championship rookie, Casper Stornes, took the men’s title in Nice.) There are a couple of women who have burst on to the IRONMAN scene this year who could very well contend for a podium spot.

Julie Derron on the run at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Julie Derron, the Swiss Olympic silver medalist from Paris, followed that breakthrough day up with bunch of runner-up finishes at T100 races (Ibiza, Lake Las Vegas and Dubai) before rounding out her year with a fifth-place finish in Taupo. She struggled in the Singapore to start her season before bouncing back with a win at T100 San Francisco (over Knibb), a runner-up finish in Vancouver (to Knibb),,, a win at IRONMAN Vittoria-Gasteiz and a fourth-place finish at T100 London, less than a month after that IRONMAN debut. Often one of the fastest runners in any field, it will be interesting to see if she can stay close enough off the bike to be in the mix for a top finish. Like many Brett Sutton-coached athletes, an IRONMAN featured in Derron’s Olympic build, too – she took second at IRONMAN Emilia Romagna in 2022 – so she’s not quite as much of a rookie over the distance.

Norway’s Solveig Loevseth is another Olympian from last year who has moved up to full-distance racing in style. A third-place finish behind the speedsters in Hamburg was followed up with an impressive win at IRONMAN Lake Placid. Both races featured 2:46 marathons, too, which bodes well for the Big Island.

Marta Sanchez was sixth in Nice last year, but hasn’t raced on the Big Island yet. Just a few weeks after her race in Nice she bounced back to win IRONMAN Barcelona, and has a runner-up finish from South Africa and a third-place from Lake Placid on her resume from this year as she heads to Kona.

Others to Watch

• Germany’s Anne Reischmann took IRONMAN South Africa and was fourth amongst the speedsters in Hamburg.
• American Jackie Hering won the IRONMAN Asia-Pacific Championship in Cairns to go along with a win at 70.3 Louisville and a runner-up finish at 70.3 Santa Cruz.
• Marjolaine Pierre thrilled her hometown crowd with her fourth in Nice last year and arrives in Kona as the reigning World Triathlon Long Distance Champion and finished third at IRONMAN Vitoria-Gasteiz.

There will no-doubt be some other names that appear near the top of the results come October 11, but for now we’ll give things a rest and leave you with the official start list for Kona.

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